Morningtide attempts to balance the "tribe matters" mechanics of Lorwyn with "job matters." This is more interesting for draft than constructed. L-L-M draft might just be the best ever. Constructed wise, there's fewer cards that are interesting in the abstract compared to Lorwyn, which wasn't exactly a winner from that standpoint (cashseize, 2/5 of the command cycle, 2-3 Planeswalkers, and a few artifacts), but there's a variety of loose cycles that are sure to prove popular, such as Bannerets, two mana creatures that reduce the casting cost of others that share their tribe / classes. There's a cycle of "Timmy" style equipment for each of the jobs, too, like an axe that can automatically equip to a warrior whenever a new creature enters play.

There are three new mechanics.

Prowl is a form of ninjitsu (pay less mana for a card if you connect with an attacking rogue) given just to boost the rogue class up a bit since it doesn't have the same historic status as soldier or wizard.

Reinforce lets you transform a card into plus-1 counters on a creature in play if you wish. Couldn't be less exciting for constructed.

Kinship is a wildly swingy one that has various "recruiter" type effects. Hard to explain and probably not worth it. Most powerful kinship effect is probably here:

Perhaps the biggest news is Warren Weirding, a tutorable removal spell that gives legacy goblins a better chance against that speedbump known as tarmogoyf that threshold plays.

For standard and extended, the big news is:

Both are desirable enough ($15+) for the popular formats that I think they'll depress the value of other cards in the set, a la Pithing Needle. Mutavault can't turn itself into a 3/3 blocker by tapping like Mishra's Factory can, but otherwise it's pure upside. Heck, it even counts as a sliver.

The card that eternal players seem most enamored with is Countryside Crusher.

quote:

Countryside Crusher 1RRCreature - Giant Warrior At the beginning of your upkeep, reveal the top card of your library. If it's a land card, put it into your graveyard and repeat this process.Whenever a land card is put into your graveyard from anywhere, put a +1/+1 counter on Countryside Crusher.

Various terrageddon and burn/sligh lists are being tweaked to take advantage of never drawing land past three or four.

Bitterblossom is my favorite of the set. It doesn't currently have a deck (outside of the ridiculously expensive standard fairies). I've already preordered a set as anything that allows you to trade one resource for another is bound to be useful somehow. Right now, the ideal is Dark Ritual, Dark Ritual, Bitterblossom, Contamination, receive concession. But I think that there's a deck that leverages the cards of both Pox and Demon Stompy that can take advantage of it.

Other cards getting various amounts of hype:

quote:

Slithermuse 2UUCreature - Elemental When Slithermuse leaves play, choose an opponent. If that player has more cards in hand than you, draw cards equal to the difference.Evoke 3U (?)

Marked for Sea Stompy, the idea is that you play out your hand while stuffing the opponent down with Chalices of the Void set for 1 and 2. Then you get to refill your own hand by evoking. The possible combo with Lion's Eye Diamond makes it an attractive card to bet on, even though its value is up in the air.

quote:

Reveillark 4WCreature - Elemental FlyingWhen Reveillark leaves play, return up to two target creature cards with power 2 or less from your graveyard to play.Evoke 5W

this is supposedly going to bring martrytron back to life in Ext. Time will tell. Hope it doesn't though.

And to throw green a bone:

quote:

Scapeshift 2GGSorcery Sacrifice any number of lands. Search your library for that many land cards, put them into play tapped, then shuffle your library.

The double green requirement is *tough.* OTOH, big mana people love the idea of fetching out a bunch of cloudposts/vesuvas or urza lands. At this stage it's just an idea though.

You could consider it just an awesome manafixing spell. Also, for the big mana to work, you'd need to be in extended, and there are a LOT of ways to accelerate your land drops in extended. Sakura-tribe scout and Sakura-tribe elder being 2 that I might use for my 8post deck when living wish rotates out. God hand would be 1st turn forest, scout, 2nd turn, forest, elder, play a land with scout. 3rd turn, play a land, then scapeshift all my lands for a breeding pool and 4 cloudposts. Nothing like 13 mana for use on turn 4.

Mutavault is ridiculous, and so is that triple-land that's basically tailor-made for Doran, The Siege Tower ball-stomping. I'm going to a pre-release tourney this weekend and I'm stoked. I hope there are some new Planeswalkers, or maybe some loyalty-affecting cards, since my buddies and I most play block-constructed and type II.

Sorry ephori, Rosewater announced that there will be no new Planeswalkers in this set; he said something along the lines of "there won't be a default in every set, we want each one to be special and put a lot of time into it." Reading more into the Morningtide Design process, I think they might've just gotten squeezed out by the crunch in order to retain Morningtide's focus as a smaller set.

Scapeshift is real, real interesting...you could theoretically run monogreen/green-x with just 3 urza pieces and 4 cloudposts, the rest being your base colors. Gonna give it a whirl, see how it goes...it's nice not needing as much redundancy

Reveillark is something I'm real interested in tinkering with, I love the Elementals. I don't know if Slithermuse is as efficient in Sea Stompy per se...I mean if you're committing 4 mana, I think a safer bet would be to play Concentrate or something similar; you're banking on your opponent having a lot of cards to make up the difference and make it worth casting, and in 1.5 and type 1, if they have a lotta cards, that's usually a bad thing for you anyways...and if they don't, you'll get little or even no cards, even.

Another thing I'm looking forward to is the Vengeful Firebrand. I think I could make that work pretty well in my 'mental deck (it's all about Soulstoke, Nova Chaser, Pandemonium and Heat Shimmer ^_^).

Mutavault is going to be ridiculous, as is Murmuring Bosk..which you can snag with Yavimaya Dryad or even Wood Elves. Craziness.

It almost seems like they were saving a majority of the solid bombs for this set, there's way more OMFG-cards here than in Lorwyn. I haven't seen much I wanna use in my 1.5 and type 1 stuff, but Idyllic Tutor does make my Enchantress.dec real, real happy -S19

edit: actually calis00, wouldn't that be 17 mana, as each Cloudpost would tap for 4? o_O Hmmm... yeah Turn 4 I'd like to hardcast Darksteel Colossus, Sword of Fire and Ice, and equip it o_O!!!!

Doh...I can't do math today, yeah, 17 mana. Or you could alternatively get 4 cloudposts, dark depths, then on turn 4 play 2 sundering titans.

I'm assuming the deck isn't T2, so why not run sterling grove? Same cost, it protects your other enchantments, and it plays nice with the enchantresses. The only downside is that people can see it coming from a mile away.

The big speculation seems to be that planeswalkers will always be a day late, dollar short: that way people can get a feel for certain characters before they appear, sort of a forced nostalgia. So when Oona comes out next year it will seem like a big big deal.

The GG in scapeshift doesn't fly not because it's hard to play, but because it's in a bad color for ext, let alone legacy. Just sitting around casting grab-land spells isn't a very good way to spend the first few turns in those formats, especially with the amount of disruption available. And if you have to have GG, you're not going to be thoughseizing or countering in response to what the other guy is doing.

If you're fetching forests early on, you might as well be playing garruk.dec (I like the Garruk + Baloth decks people are putting together) and just win that way, since it's so damn winnable.

OTOH, I shudder to think of what this is going to do to casual room EXT on MTGO. I only play ignite memories.dec there these days because of the love of big mana, whether it's cabal coffers, mirari's wake, or eight-post. As a legacy player, there's nothing I hate worse than a big mana deck, and most of the casual room ones have masturbatory finishers like Staff of Domination. It's like, if you have 50 mana, just cast demonfire and be done with it.

Hey! I went 6-3 at GP Dallas with my land grabbing monstrosity, thank you very much! =PAnyways, what are sakura tribe elders? They're perfect chump blockers, and so are the scouts once you're done with them. Though those are pretty much only good for goldfishing. Also, run moment's peace to stall and oblivion stones to clear the board. Once there, it's arcane laboratory/spellburst lock, or just drop down meester colossus.

Edit: Actually, wow now that I think about it....if you accelerated that fast, you could get 3 cloudposts, 2 breeding pools and lock the board down 4th turn.

Edit2: And you can still counter stuff playing blue/green, SS just says sac any number of lands, so if you already have breeding pools on the board, you don't have to sac them to it.

I'm surprised to see Preeminent Captain (aka 3 mana Soldier Lackey) going for $5 now. Kinda high for a card that's in a theme deck (I only ordered the B/G/W shaman and U/B rogue ones, figured they'd be the only ones that retained any semblence of value). I guess Ben Bleiweiss is betting on kithkin (probably with changeling shennanigans). Not sure if I see that happening.

I had thought I'd be able to pick up some captains cheap for my legacy soldier deck (which mostly just tries to exploit swiftblade as much as possible without a gaia's might $$$ manabase), though that's not gonna happen this week.

It kinda sucks that there hasn't been any major lorwyn block tourneys yet. I'd like to see what the pros come up with and how the various tribes actually faired (compared to that tribal wars kiddie nonsense) without TSP block helping them out.

Originally posted by calis00:Doh...I can't do math today, yeah, 17 mana. Or you could alternatively get 4 cloudposts, dark depths, then on turn 4 play 2 sundering titans.

Haha, just as delicious...I'll have to work on this once Morningtide goes live

quote:

I'm assuming the deck isn't T2, so why not run sterling grove? Same cost, it protects your other enchantments, and it plays nice with the enchantresses. The only downside is that people can see it coming from a mile away.

It's a good assumption, but I'm already running that, too. The reason why the Idyllic is on some levels better is that for the same mana cost as casting grove and saccing it, instead of putting the enchantment on my deck, it's in my hand. Another reason is that with just one white component, I can fly it off of Serra Sanctum and still have green left over for other spells (cuz Sanctum will tap for a lot ^_^ so I'll have extra white left over, too).

I mean I'm definitely running both, to be sure, but the Idyllic Tutor has a good place in my deck

richleader, I don't think one can judge whether a card is necessarily a winner or loser based on how things are right now...I mean to use a bad example (haha), it's like Invoke the Firemind at PTHonolulu: Before that, pretty much -no one- used it, even in their 'tron builds, but after that, it was actually considered a 'usable' card, simply because some guys actually won with it. Basically I'm sayin' "Give it a chance" and let's see if anyone comes up with a not-so-obvious way to break it.

I remember when everyone said Tarmogoyf was so cool, then it sucked, then it was okay, then it was $28 for one.

While I'm all for balls-out accel, I think Scape' will actually shine best in late mid-game...you set up your board with some chump-blockers (STEves and the like) or disruption/anti-disruption, then go for the Scape with some blue backup and you're good to go, swinging hard with some phatness. I've been playing around a lot with Seedborn Muse in a GUb accel-control-type deck in Type 2..I think this could be useful in it.

The only -wtf- disappointment I have with Morningtide is the Kithkin rare land with Reinforce 1. I mean seriously, CIP tapped unless you show a kithkin..can only tap for one white..and the reinforce is just 1. It seems incredibly underwhelming when compared to Mutavault or Murmuring Bosk. Knowing my luck I'll pull 5 in my first booster box...and I'll trade them away for crap rares...and they'll go up to $10 each or something...

Heck, it's dissapointing compared to Llanowar Reborn. It's kinda pointless, too, since Kithkin aren't necessary boom and bust style WW where lands past three are useless: they like mana, and wizards gave them tons of stuff like Militia's Pride to use it. So how is a plus one counter worth it? They should have made Clachan an uncommon so it would at least be a draft strategy.

On that note, it's interesting how there aren't any chase uncommons yet. Historically, the best are always in the first set, but out of the gate, the only real interest is in the obvious: blackguard is kinda cool and so is the wolf shaman. But not shriekmaw cool. Every single card is up in the air right now, which is unusual for the rarity.

Heh, I guess my enchantress deck is a bit different then most since I don't use Serra Sanctum in mine. I'll probably have to give it a try, but I'm not too sure what I'd cut. Not to mention, you have a metric assload of drawing, so it's not like it hurts you to put it on the top of the deck.

I'd give the Kithkin land a try. I've tried out kithkins...and while they do have militia's pride, it still doesn't use up all their mana because it only works with non-token cards. And against most competitive decks, you aren't keeping much more than 3 or 4 creatures vs them. Not to mention it's mana that can be a combat trick. Of course, all that goes out the window if you also run mobilization.

Originally posted by richleader:Heck, it's dissapointing compared to Llanowar Reborn. It's kinda pointless, too, since Kithkin aren't necessary boom and bust style WW where lands past three are useless: they like mana, and wizards gave them tons of stuff like Militia's Pride to use it. So how is a plus one counter worth it? They should have made Clachan an uncommon so it would at least be a draft strategy.

I totally agree with this, and yeah the Clachan should've been an uncommon; when I saw it, I thought "oh cool, Kithkin's Llanowar Reborn... oh .. uh... it's RARE...? " I guess we'll have to see if this goes into the $.25 bin, I have a feeling it might.

quote:

Originally posted by calis00:Heh, I guess my enchantress deck is a bit different then most since I don't use Serra Sanctum in mine. I'll probably have to give it a try, but I'm not too sure what I'd cut. Not to mention, you have a metric assload of drawing, so it's not like it hurts you to put it on the top of the deck.

If you don't mind me asking, what colors are you using? I find that even having just 1 with some crop rotation goodness really ramps up the mana a lot...granted it's all white mana haha But yeah, even if it's not in the deck's colors it really boosts your mana capacity, even if you just use it for colorless components.

The tutor is awesome for me because I've been in situations where after all my card draw, I'll hit either a sterling grove or an enlightened tutor, casting the grove nets me an Argothian/Verduran Enchantress or even worse..more lands haha. So in my own weird, janky experience, I would have loved to have tapped the Sanctum for 6, cast the Idyllic Tutor to fetch Solitary Confinement/Worship and then play that out. I think it helps smooth out the deck for mid-game and gives a good enough boost to push you into late game.

Hmmm...I think I'm gonna tinker with my enchantress deck when I get home, put back in Cadaverous Bloom hehe ^_^-S19

edit:As an aside, I've been hoping for a new enchantress to show up in the more recent sets, even if she were some weird UBG Legendary Enchantress heh. Ah well...maybe in Shadowmoor

Mine's a GW noncompetitive vintage deck. The centerpiece of the combo is actually cloudstone curio. I get out fastbond, 1 enchantress's presence, and a glacial chasm or solitary confinement, and I win. And just to be clear, I meant I'd give the tutor a try. Serra Sanctum doesn't seem to really help my deck much and if I draw it way too early with no other white sources, it screws me.

I had my very first "pact win" tonight. Was playing Restore Balance / Gargadon (I play now with blue mixed in for draw, it's less anoying to other people when I actively search for the combo instead of just waiting for it behind fogs; would probably be better off with black for tutor, although I don't own any) against a Primal Forcemage / Groundbreaker deck.

I have the combo suspended and he has his Forcemage out. He gets greedy and casts groundbreaker AND then summoner's pacts for utkabi drake. He then clobbers me hard. Next turn I'm able to combo out with timecrafting (although my two gargadon's were turns away from coming in), leaving him with zero lands in play. Boom, upkeep, he congratulates me on my "draw" as if he didn't walk right into it with the pact.

The netherspirits were a tough call as they can get stranded due to the shriekmaws, but they can also lead to early game cabal therapy flashbacks and serve in a contamination lock.

I'm not sure if the lifeloss is bad enough where Thoughtseize (over duress) is unsuportable, I'd have to test the deck to see. (although I only own one cashseize and probably won't ever have another.)

Like I said, the two decks it draws from don't need a combo to lock someone out of a game, they just do it (land destruction in pox, chalice and trinisphere in demonstompy), whereas contamination requires a creature, as does cabal therapy (which might be an edge card: this deck could run trinisphere, too, in its place). It's also more vulnerable to graveyard hate. It's probably more fun though.

Originally posted by modisch:out of curiosity... is there a market for old cards? I used to play from about 1993 to 1996 and I have good sized collection of cards. I used to buy expansions a case of boosters at a time.

I'm curious if it'd be worth my time to inventory my collection and put it up for sale.

thanks,

-m

There definetly is, but the value you'll get entirely depends on what you have / what condition it is in.

www.starcitygames.com is probably the largest magic store on the internet, you can check there or eBay for prices.

If you have stuff dating back to Alpha/Beta/Unlimited there are a ton of cards worth good money. Arabian Nights and Antiquities have a couple big $ cards (Library of Alexandria, Bazaar of Baghdad, Mishra's Workshop...) but everything starts to trickle down to a reasonable price after that, although you can certainly still make some money from cards in later sets (Force of Will, 3rd edition Dual Lands come to mind).

Originally posted by richleader:I have the combo suspended and he has his Forcemage out. He gets greedy and casts groundbreaker AND then summoner's pacts for utkabi drake. He then clobbers me hard. Next turn I'm able to combo out with timecrafting (although my two gargadon's were turns away from coming in), leaving him with zero lands in play. Boom, upkeep, he congratulates me on my "draw" as if he didn't walk right into it with the pact.

Hah! "Draw" indeed, eh? It's not like you were covering up Restore Balance with your hand the whole time, hehe. Gratz on the win, very nice.

Allusion: Hehe, sorry man, I won't be..ah..even on that continent ^_^ Best of luck at your PR though

richleader: I'm iffy, too, on the Nether Spirits, maybe Nether Shadows instead as those are guaranteed returns that you can fuel Contamination and/or Cabal Therapy flashback. Other than that, I think the deck should rock

oh, calis00, here's my current enchantress build off the top of my head (I think this is correct lol):

It plays out like a words-of-wind enchantress with accel into your lock, hopefully by turn 3; with a god draw I can actually start locking by turn 2, but that's somewhat rare. The difference I opted for was a wish-board-style SB with Research/Development to grab up to 4 things that I might need more readily...and to stave off a loss against Solidarity via Brain Freeze. I actually won a tight match against solidarity when he Meditated, went off, and during my upkeep I Researched in 4 cards, including Akroma; with Cloud of Faeries, Akroma, and a couple Enchantresses, I could do an infinite WoW-bounce between Gaea's Cradle and Exploration(s).

It pushes more versatility, in that you can WoW lock, kill with a phat Stroke of Genius/Decree of Justice/Kamahl Rushdown, or deck them if need be with Solitary Confinement/Squee Goblin Nabob. It's by and large my favorite deck archetype ever, although Fish is a close 2nd -S19

Still playing Restore Balance combo. Went against a R/B sliver deck today and this guy had two Sedge Slivers out with swamp power (making each 4/4). He uses a mog fanatic and a terror to clear my board. Then, in a haha-nelson moment, he casts nameless inversion (+3/-3) on one of his slivers in order to nail me for 11. Only his sliver stopped being a sliver (no more +2/+2) and died on the spot and the other one only connected for 3.

Horrible misplay, one that I had to instruct him on why it happened like that, although we both conceded it didn't matter in the grand scheme of things (I resolved my combo next turn), but it really clued me in for the first time how cool the changeling mechanic really is.

I was reading some forum and this one dude was so excited by countryside crusher (god the artwork is dissappointing; I was imagining a guy basically wearing Alpha Juggernaut's on his fists or something) and it's ability to take over the universe that he bought every lodestone bauble on StarCity and Troll and Toad, as in *hundreds* of them. He wanted to corner the market in case it took off.

It is a nice combo. But magic speculation / economics is something that's hilarious to me. Especially how he bragged about it. Star City is fully restocked already though they doubled the price to $2 in case he wants to try again.

I've been running into a lot of Forced Fruition decks online. They're shockingly effective in casual games: they actually beat most combo dead, so combo decks can't really take advantage of the extra cards. I'm not sure how well they fair against other decks though, since I can't afford a good aggro or control deck online.

I'm thinking about making a shared fate deck. I played against one tonight (my combo was better and him drawing my deck didn't help him any) and it seemed like a fun way to play on a budget: get to use all of someone's expensive cards against him.

Most of the lists I've found have been for mirrodin standard (dumb leveler combo) or for vintage.

The guy I played had a list full of cantrips and scry cards to dig, obvious stuff like fellwar stone, some discard (including mindlash sliver), a few counters (mostly bad like perplex). Anyone ever make a shared fate deck?

Might not be worth it though: probably autolose to anything blue and get a lot of instant concessions vs other decks (besides expensive aggro with planeswalkers that will crush you).

Originally posted by richleader:Still playing Restore Balance combo. Went against a R/B sliver deck today and this guy had two Sedge Slivers out with swamp power (making each 4/4). He uses a mog fanatic and a terror to clear my board. Then, in a haha-nelson moment, he casts nameless inversion (+3/-3) on one of his slivers in order to nail me for 11. Only his sliver stopped being a sliver (no more +2/+2) and died on the spot and the other one only connected for 3.

Horrible misplay, one that I had to instruct him on why it happened like that, although we both conceded it didn't matter in the grand scheme of things (I resolved my combo next turn), but it really clued me in for the first time how cool the changeling mechanic really is.

Heh, very nice...there's only one local player here who is really, really into slivers, myself only on occasion playing Zombies (gogo Korlash/Hakkon), so the changeling mechanic hasn't had too much impact on our meta...although it really -is- nice when Sliver Legion charges forth and gets spanked by Akroma, thinking it was 14/14 but ended up 10/4.

quote:

I was reading some forum and this one dude was so excited by countryside crusher (god the artwork is dissappointing; I was imagining a guy basically wearing Alpha Juggernaut's on his fists or something) and it's ability to take over the universe that he bought every lodestone bauble on StarCity and Troll and Toad, as in *hundreds* of them. He wanted to corner the market in case it took off.

It is a nice combo. But magic speculation / economics is something that's hilarious to me. Especially how he bragged about it. Star City is fully restocked already though they doubled the price to $2 in case he wants to try again.

There are a few things that are pretty open to speculation...but I find that it's almost always things that aren't quite so obvious that end up skyrocketting. I mean you Tarmogoyf! I remember trading a couple at $10-value, thinking I had a good deal; oddly, my friend I was trading them to thought I was getting a good deal as well lol. Ah, gotta love/hate it.

I dunno how you're gonna corner the market with hundreds of anything, considering print runs are well into the thousands.

My friend had a janky old shared fate deck, it never worked too well and was pretty much a multiplayer-only thing. That said, when he did get it going, it was pretty impressive, but he's always making weird, very impressive kinda decks heh. Now something really challenging/fun to do is finding some Top 10 Worst Cards ever lists and working with that...you figure a lotta those cards will be, like, $1 for 4, so they're easy to pick up Interesting times trying to get Nefarious Lich to rock.

crestfallen, actually I think most of us venture into 1.5, if that...I'm actually pretty heavy into Type 2, but have a long-standing relationship with my Enchantress deck (which was actually just Extended when I first got back into Magic a few years ago..*sigh* damn you rotations! damn you...).

I dunno about Ajani with Kithkin..like you said richleader, he isn't as synergistic as Garruk is with Elves, so personally I tend to just slot him out and go for Warhammers, instead, or even Glorious Anthems over him. I don't see him as being a solid enough 4-cc-slot guy for a deck that's supposed to be so aggressive, +1/+1's notwithstanding.

With that said, I didn't know Oona's Prowler was up to $5/each...yikes...glad I traded for a bunch when the college kids were back for winter break :P Ah well, few more days until Morningtide's release hehehe.-S19

I'm not an ebay accolyte so I have to go by the book value which is $10.

Crest, I'm more of a 1.5 player too. After doing a lot of winston draft over vacation, I realized that I love simple boards, or more accurately, ruling simple boards. My favorite deck is Pox, mostly because it's inexpensive (until you start going nuts with it and then it's almost as much as a Threshold list), and second because of all the 1.5 decks, it's the most flavorful. What kind of *story* does a threshold deck tell? I mean, you're running 7/8 cards with the word pox on them and all the cards are mechanically evil, even more so than the other monoblack decks. But if I can keep the board at zero creatures and a grand total of four lands in play (total), that's a gamestate I like.

Whereas online in the ext casual room, since most players are priced out of playing good aggro decks, bad rich players can afford to krosan verge into multiple shock lands and take the time to let their lands come in tapped since they so rarely have to deal with kird ape, boros swiftblade, gaea's might, etc. Everyone expects the game to go to turn 8-12 without disruption. Granted real ext isn't like that, but between all the rock decks and that enduring ideal silliness (yeah, just try that in 1.5), semi-big mana (urzatron is at least on the outs now) seems the way to go.

I'm really pissed that they took Bleiweiss' enchantress deck away from standard (lost green enchantress in 10th). Maybe it's too good vs. tribal decks, but that's no reason to wreck it. I love the idea of temporal isolating your own aurotog, attacking, and then sacking the isolation (and every other enchantment) after blockers are declared.

Got me interested enough in trying out my enchantress deck. It's kinda lousy in that I don't have any pre-rav or post-tsp cards in it, which is really limited for extended. But I did go 2-0 vs. an elf deck.

Being able to replay the aspect of mongooses and spirit loops at will after sacking them (provided the other player taps out) is incredible. I can only imagine how much better the deck is with oblivion ring: you play garruk, I ring it, you play another garruk, I sac ring to Auratog, legend rule kills garruks.

Of course, you just lose to control decks, often by milling yourself.

And on that note, now with Vedalken Shackles taking over ext in Next Level Blue, wtf is it with Shackles? Why the hell would Wizards print that card? Hi, we'll just give something unparalleled to blue! I know it was Mirrodin block, but still. Hell, the mechanic "we care how many basic lands of this type you have" belongs to black (Korlash, Mind Sludge, etc.), not blue -- and yet blue gets the only card with that mechanic in the entire set?

Reminds me of a comment in a Star City article (Talen Lee, maybe), about Narcomoeba in FST: "this card is designed for dredge. But it's blue. Because they want to pretend it's really about milling and is supposed to combo with Duskmantle, House of Shadow or something. And they had to make it fly for no good reason even though it just exists to flash back dread return. But when two years from now, they decide to revisit the goes from library to play mechanic, it will be blue. Supernarcomoeba, which will kick akromas ass for zero mana, will be blue. And when people complain, Wizards will just say that they were keeping true to the amoeba's roots."

Ran into a Nether Traitor + Fairies (and Mull Drifter) + Fallen Ideal deck tonight. I top-decked Gargadon to steal the game (combo'd him down to no perms and one card in hand) when I was at one life (had two fury charms in hand, no one expects that so he felt safe tapping out).

Reminds me of how much I liked to play Traitor decks while Rav was still legal. Maybe Bitterblossom will be the card that breaks him again. (Golgari Germination did it last time, in combo with gravepact and nantuko husk.)

I'm not an ebay accolyte so I have to go by the book value which is $10.

Heh as of my writing the price has gone up another $.80, to about 5.83/ea. with shipping. Makes trading my Sowers of Temptation for them all the less painful heh.

Oh and yeah, I think Pox is fantastic, up there with Rifter for me There's just something about saying "hey, we're all gonna die, just you're gonna die a bit faster than me ". But Rifter...I just put that back together a couple days ago and gave it a whirl. Welders died, Hippies died, Discard died, Monoblue got torn a new one...life was good

I'm always praying for a new Enchantress to show up, but I have a feeling that the archetype may be doomed to Extended and beyond, which makes me pretty sad..but eh, what can you do, really? Just gotta move on or move to 1.5 (or, again, Extended).

richleader, if you're heading for the Extended route, would you consider putting Solitary Confinement in instead of Worship? IME it is far more resilient and helps lock your life at a relatively safe value on top of giving yourself Shroud. It's cheaper to boot and you can pay for the upkeep with all your Enchantress draws.

Traitor decks are hella fun...I was running Hivestone + Necrotic Sliver + Nether Traitor with some green accel (Far Seeks, Into the North, etc.) to help generate the manabase for massive Necrotic-Sliver-action heh. The great thing was it could also deal with either Akroma by saccing a birds of paradise or llanowar elf (or basal sliver or sinew sliver, depending on what I needed).

Scrying Sheets is something I'm still really in love with for Type 2, Snow 4 Life and all that . The card advantage really mixes well with a lotta decks I have, I keep swapping them in and out. Now all I need is, er, more snow covered lands heh.-S19

Originally posted by DrFaulken:Is anyone going to any midnight release events tonight? My FNM store has a three Morningtide booster draft going on, and then I'll be back again later tomorrow for regularly-scheduled FNM.

Hehe if I didn't have to fly to a different island to get there, I would actually consider it. Ah well, best of luck to you DrFaulken, may you whoop lots of arse and pull some foil Mutavaults.

Speaking of said $17-$20 card... I don't know if this is a UK/Europe-thing only or if it's all of the US as well, but there was a WotC bigwig from the UK who suggested that those who are interested in Mutavaults check out the next 2-Headed Giant tournament coming up; I'm guessing it's a Top 8 or Champion card, full-face art with overlayed text, kinda like Niv-Mizzet or Serra Avenger was.-S19

I'm knee-deep at work, but I had fun. I rare drafted like a mother, but still managed to kill someone with my ghetto all-blue "Millfolk" deck with four Ink Dissolvers at the forefront. Yeah, I lost all my matches, but I loved the look of dismay on my opponent's face when I milled him for eighteen cards in three turns due to kinship alone. I wound up decking him, it was a hoot.

More tonight during FNM, I'll probably be more realistic this time around.

I play an ext Ignite Memories deck that would be standard legal but for Seething Song; rather than trying to get cute with turn 3 wins, it's built around the slow roll and has decent play in game two and three with its ability to put expensive permanents back in the opponent's hands. It packs lots of pyroclasm effects to sweep the board as I put Locket of Yesterdays into play and attempt to get a lot of draw spells in my yard.

Was playing against a mill deck (glimpse the unthinkable, book burning, etc.) although he only milled me for about 14 cards through the course of the game, as he tried to get cute with izzet guildmage and I had answers. Somehow he set up the perfect turn 8 for me though:

Vision SkeinsThink TwiceThink Twice from graveyardThink Twice from graveyardThink Twice from graveyardThink Twice from graveyardCompulsive ResearchCompulsive ResearchCounsel of the SoratamiRite of FlameRite of FlameLocket of YesterdaysCounsel of the SoratamiLocket of YesterdaysSeething SongRite of FlameSeething SongSeething SongSpellbookPyroclasmPyroclasmIgnite Memories [storm 21]

Tendrils for 10 is for chumps I have an elf Tendrils deck that hasn't been updated in, umm... 2 blocks? 3 blocks? that can run through like 25-28 cards on turn 3 or 4, with at least 2 Tendrils (more is possible). Can easily take out a board of 6 players by itself... unless someone plays Time Stop or something.

Tivadar to kill Colossus...that's... hmmm interesting? I mean I guess I can see it, it's dual purpose versus gobbos, but I mean, yeah that's a bit odd.

My friend and I finally got a hold of some boosters and played a few rounds of Mental Magic (I think it's officially called that or Mind Magic, I forget which) which for the most part is really fun until you realize that kinship and clash do not work well with a format that has no library interaction heh; in Mental Magic you crack open a booster and that is your hand and library all in one, you don't draw cards, and cards that interact with your library have no effect; stuff like Compulsive Research is actually somewhat strong since your target has nothing to draw and has to discard 2 cards or a land, heh. It's a fun format, I don't know if it's supported by MODO, though.

Still, it was a fun time to be had by all

One of my favorite cards in the whole set is Ambassador Oak, although it's also an interesting display of how much more efficient today's creatures are in comparison to Magic when it first came out. I mean for 3G you not only get a 3/3 (a la Hill Giant) but you also get a 1/1, both with relevent creature types to the set. Craziness.

Pulled a Mind Shatter and traded for my friend's Mind Spring and Idyllic Tutor (gogo Enchantress! ^_^), checking deals out on eBay. Some cards are still ridunkulously high like Mutavault and the Colossus, but there are a ton of fun things that are dirt cheap. I picked up a set of Vengeful Firebrands for $2 which are going into a deck this afternoon, heh.-S19

I've only opened one pack (got a Colossus, which made me look up how it's doing), as I bought it locally. Like to support the shop down the block from me, but $4.23 or whatever after tax is a lot for a couple of cards.

I think my favorite common is Moonglove Changeling. I like the art (I really like the high concept art in Lorwyn, Reivellark in particular, it's much better than that for Kamigawan spirits imo), and it really gets you thinking when it comes to combos. Everything from Thornbite Staff (= goblin railgunner?) to lands like contested cliffs + swarmyard.

I think my biggest disappointment is with the +1 counter toolbox creatures like festercreep and stinkmoggie. Most of them don't come with enough counters to shine unless you waste a reinforce card on them (which is out of color for half of them). I know they're weighted towards limited, but I was hoping for some non linear decks to open up within block. They could have really kickstarted that if they were more aggressive.

I saw someone on MTGO requesting a block game saying "no netdecks," but it's not like anyone couldn't figure out Garruk + Elves by themselves. I couldn't think of a deck that the guy wouldn't assume was copied from one list or another. Of course, he probably was just saying "no $200 decks," which is fair enough, but I really can't see that many interesting budget possibilities in Lorwyn that reasonably compentent players would enjoy playing.

StarCity has some column up now called "tribal thriftiness" for budget players, but, no offense to the writer, it's an exercise in pointlessness for the audience he's trying to reach. If I can't afford a good deck online, I'm going to play something like Restore Balance that can luck-sack instant victories (or give me a chance to fight for them through skill), not some dumb critter based strategy that will lose to anyone with better cards, every time.

--Aluren--Elves with more variable CCs, still mostly 1 or 2, maybe a few with 3.

I'm sure you could see how it works. Generate a bunch of mana ASAP, play Tangleroot + Glimpse of Nature, go to town. Or in version 2, generate a bunch of mana, play Aluren + Glimpse of Nature, go to town.

You can do an almost endless amount of tweaking since there are so many elves that do so many different things.

It is weak to counter magic or Time Stops, however. Or a reeeally early board clearer if they power it out with Chrome Mox, Extraplanar Lens or somesuch. Taking out a turn 1 Priest of Titania will probably only slow you down 1 turn though.

I don't have the exact decklists ATM, but I can post them up if you're interested. It's pretty consistent, and a decent surprise, to a lot of players. For some reason, they just don't expect it.